My Heart Under My Feet
by Holdur
Summary: The team is dead and Elle and Reid are on the run, trying to stop each other from killing. AU sometime mid-season 4 Warnings: character death, violence, language and sexual situations


My Heart Under My Feet

Warnings: character death, violence, language and sexual situations

Notes: Many thanks to bessemerproccess on lj/dw who let me take this idea and run, even after she had already written it. This story was prompted by the last section of her wonderful Five Ways Spencer Reid Falls Down, which you can find on AO3. Though you don't have to read it first, as this story was written to stand alone, you should anyway.

Many thanks also to oroburos69 who did a fantastic job as beta, and to a couple offline friends who talked me through the hard scenes.

The title is from either T.S Eliot's _The Wasteland_ or Sylvia Plath's _Last Words_, depending on which one you like better.

* * *

Every morning in Independence, Missouri, Elle takes in the headlines through the haze of a hangover. She stares at the front page of _The Kansas City Star_ until the coffee kicks in, then switches to _The Washington Post_ where she pulls out the local news. Two years ago she nearly missed the story of Gideon walking away because she was only reading the front page and two months ago she didn't need to read the newspaper to get the news. The decimation of an elite unit of FBI agents is top news anywhere and she heard it on the radio before she saw the papers. The chances of any news now is slim, but Elle keeps reading because there are still two survivors that could end up in the headlines.

Three if she counts Gideon. Four if she counts herself.

* * *

She gets the call while she's driving to the station. It's Lieutenant Donahue, telling her to get her ass over to the 7-11 on East 23rd and to hurry the fuck up. Something about the tense worry in his voice pushes her foot down on the gas and tells her to save yelling at him for later.

Elle ignores the speed limit and makes it in record time. They've cordoned off the entire block. Donahue meets her halfway to the scene with a Kevlar vest.

"He has a gun and he's killed a man," he tells her, but won't say who. Elle shoots him a frustrated glare and moves past the line of cars and police strung out in a half circle.

He spots her before she can get an ID. All she can make out is a large man lying on the ground in a limp heap and another, lanky and younger, crouching at his side. A gun hangs from one hand. The distance makes detail difficult. She takes another step forward and the man who is still alive looks up. She sees long brown hair and the glint of the sun off his glasses.

"Elle!" he calls and waves.

There's a click of guns around her, followed by Donahue's hissed "Hold your fire!"

It may be too far for details, but Elle knows the voice. There's a moment where she can't breathe. Then she shoves the part of her that is crying to the back of her head and lets the part of her that is a former FBI agent and current member of the Independence police force take over. She raises her hands and takes slow steps forward.

"Reid?" she says, "Reid, I need you to put the gun down." Another step closer and Elle can make out details. She sweeps her gaze over the body. Multiple gunshots to the head have obliterated his face and there's a knife lodged in his heart. Reid is clean, except for his hands. As the blood from the body gets closer to him, he inches backwards to keep it off his shoes.

"I know," he says, "I know what happens next."

So does Elle. What happens next is that Elle arrests him, a psychiatrist diagnoses him non compos mentis and a judge locks him away, probably forever. Elle is not sure she can be part of it, not even the part of her that has been in law enforcement for years.

"Yeah right, genius. You don't know everything," she says. It doesn't get her a smile like she hoped. It gets her a frown.

"I know enough," Reid replies. He pauses for a moment, and then sets the gun softly on the ground. Behind her, the guns go down and there's an almost palpable break in tension. Where there was silence, now there is slight rustle, officers murmuring to each other, the crackle of a radio. Elle hopes they aren't calling in the FBI and knows they probably are. She kicks his gun away and draws him up with a hand at his elbow. When she cuffs him, he looks down at the body and doesn't speak.

Donahue comes forward to take Reid from her. Elle steps forward slightly, holding onto Reid's elbow. She's not ready to hand him over, not when she knows it'll be the last free air he breathes.

"Wait, let me take him," she says. When Donahue hesitates, Elle adds, "He's not dangerous."

"The man back there begs to differ," he says, but then he shrugs his shoulders and presses his lips in a thin line. Elle used to be an FBI agent, Reid still is and Donahue knows about survivors. He nods once and steps back. Elle guides Reid into the back of her car with one hand on his head, then drives toward the station.

When she's stopped at a red light, she looks back at Reid in the rearview mirror. He has his forehead against the window, watching the city pass by.

"I didn't know you were here," he says, "I'm glad you were here."

"Right," Elle says. The light turns green. She takes a left and heads for the state line.

* * *

It doesn't take long to figure out that something isn't quite right with Reid. She can remember what he was like the first time he killed a man. It took a week to hit him and then he fidgeted and fussed constantly, turning away from strangers like he was suddenly aware of the gun on his hip and what it could do. Mostly though, he looked guilty. Sitting beside her in the car, rolling his sleeves up to his elbows, Reid doesn't look guilty.

Elle asks him about it once, without asking about it. She pulls off to the side of the road in Kansas to take the cuffs off and dig a rag out of the trunk so Reid can wipe some of the blood from his hands. The enormity of the situation is sinking in and watching Reid dig the blood out from under his fingernails makes her feel jumpy. She needs a stiff drink and it's not yet noon.

"Reid, you killed a man," she says. He nods, dropping the rag to the ground and closing his door. His hands are not quite clean; they still look pink. She needs to find somewhere for him to wash and clean clothes for them both and somewhere to sleep and somewhere to eat and she can't use her credit card and she doesn't know if she has any money.

"Yes," Reid says, "But he needed killing."

She gets that. Elle killed a man, too.

* * *

Traveling with Reid is exactly as annoying as Elle expects and she starts sending mental notes to Hotch saying, _sorry for any trouble I gave you, I get it now_.

At the edge of the Kansas-Colorado border, Elle stops and sends Reid out to get food. Instead, he wanders down a busy street, bumps into a stranger and comes back with fifty dollars.

"You can't break the law like that," she tells him, "If you get caught, it's over. No speeding, no stealing." In her head, she's running through every mistake an UNSUB ever made, making a list of do's and don'ts.

"I need a haircut and you have to find another set of plates for the car," Reid says and damn it all if he isn't right, as usual.

He takes a bill and hands her the rest, disappearing down the street without another word. She watches him go, the money crumpled in her hand. When he's out of sight, she grits her teeth and lets her instincts take her to the seedy side of town, where there are plenty of guys who don't ask questions. She flirts and tries not to act like a cop. It helps that she's wondering what Reid is doing now, whether she'll come back to the car to find Reid dead, Reid sitting on the hood eating ice cream or Reid missing and a cop waiting.

Instead she finds Reid with his hair cropped short, a bag of squashed fast food that oozes grease and a bruise spreading black and blue across one cheek. He's leaning against the car with a wiry sort of wariness that reminds Elle of a feral cat.

He doesn't offer any explanation for the bruise when she asks, handing the food to her with a smug smirk instead. She grabs it and calls him an idiot. Reid snaps that he never asked for protecting, then doesn't speak to her all through Colorado.

The haircut makes him look like Hotch, but Elle doesn't mention it. She has another note to send: _he never used to be like this, did he?_

* * *

Elle never asks about the man in Missouri and Reid never talks about it. She knows enough from the papers and she knows how much detail the FBI can keep from the media. When they say _one survivor_, they don't say why and when they say _wanted in connection with the murder of five FBI agents_, they don't say how.

Reid considers it a family matter and Elle doesn't know if she is anymore.

* * *

They're in Douglas, Wyoming and Elle hasn't had a full night's sleep in two days. They've spent the last few nights in the car. Reid curls up in the back seat and Elle dozes behind the wheel, periodically driving them to a new street when she wakes up feeling exposed. She needs a drink, but she's out of money and nearly out of gas. Reid is asleep, which is the only thing that's keeping her from screaming. It's almost full dark. She needs to find a good place to park for the night, but Elle keeps getting the prickling feeling on the back of her neck like they're being watched. She needs to walk. She's been driving for days.

She parks the car on the street and locks Reid inside.

Elle's walking on the sidewalk, feeling desperate and hungry when a man stops in front of her and she ends up with her back against the brick in an alley. His hands and breath are hot against her skin, but he slipped 100 dollars into her back pocket so she tilts her hips and wraps a leg around his waist.

This is easy and she knows what to do. She's in a bubble where she doesn't have to think about Reid and money and she likes it here. The man pushes her shirt up, fumbles his fingers against the button of her jeans.

Suddenly the guy is gone, leaving her cold in the night air. It takes a minute to figure out why. She has her shirt up to her armpits, her jeans pushed past her hips and Reid has the man on the ground, beating him to death with his bare hands. It's eerily quiet in the alley. The only sound is the dull thud of Reid's fists against the man's face.

"Reid," Elle says, "Shit! Reid, stop!" She scrambles to his side, pulling at his shoulders. She pulls him to the side and they fall back together. Reid lands on her chest, but she wraps her arms around his torso and holds tight in case he tries to get back up again. It takes a couple minutes for him to stop struggling. When he does, Elle pushes him off onto the concrete.

"Get in the car," she orders, "Now!" She doesn't watch to see if he obeys, though the snap of the car door down the street a moment later tells her that he did. She crouches by the man's body. His chest rises slightly. His face is covered in blood. He isn't dead yet, but Elle thinks he will be soon. She searches frantically through his pockets, grabbing his wallet.

In the car, Reid is in a panic. His hands are fluttering through the air, picking at the seatbelt, smoothing his sweater, wringing together. He's taking in huge lungfuls of air and starts shouting when she throws the car into drive. His voice is loud and a little high. It takes Elle a while to work out what he's saying, but when she does, she lets out her own thin, nearly hysterical laugh. Reid isn't finally having the panic attack Elle has been expecting over killing two men. He's having a hissy fit in defense of her honor.

"He shouldn't do that!" Reid shouts at her, "He shouldn't do that to you!"

"Jesus Christ, Reid!" Elle shouts back.

"Go back, I'll fucking kill him," he says.

"You already did. He's dead," she tells him. Reid takes one more gulping breath and lets it out slow. He punches at the dashboard and then slumps back in the seat.

"Good," he mumbles. It comes out so low she almost can't hear. "Good."

They drive in silence for a few minutes. When Elle looks over at him, his eyes are closed and his breathing even. He's asleep. She watches her reflection in the rearview mirror as the streetlights fill the car in a predictable rhythm. She looks wild and drawn, scared. She's starting to wonder if she made a mistake, if locking Reid up is the only real option.

"Christ," she whispers. Outside, it starts to rain.

* * *

According to his wallet, the man Reid killed in the alley is named Mark Malone and he's a lawyer. The cash in his wallet pays for a full tank of gas and two nights at a motel with enough left over for food. She stops on the way back from the grocery store as she passes over a bridge to toss the wallet over the side. It disappears with a soft flap of leather. Elle doesn't wait to hear it splash into the water.

She spends the first twelve hours asleep, blissfully stretched out on a real mattress. When she wakes up in the morning, Reid is sitting cross-legged on the other bed, watching cartoons on TV and eating cornflakes dry out of the box.

"Did you know that in one Looney Tunes comic, Wile E. Coyote's middle name is Ethelbert?" Reid asks when he sees that she is awake. He searches through the plastic bags of groceries, fills a small plastic bowl with Fruit Loops and hands it to her across the open space between the beds. On screen, the coyote gets squashed by a 16 ton weight.

"Know it all," she says. She throws a piece of cereal at him. It bounces off his nose and he frowns, looking around in confusion. When he sees the smile Elle can't keep off her face, he sticks his tongue out at her.

They spend the day inside, swapping snacks and switching between cartoons and daytime soaps. Reid tells her about cartoon physics and they make bets on who is sleeping with whom. For two people trained in developing psychological profiles, it's almost too easy.

"If only the UNSUBs were this archetypical," Elle says.

"Rossi liked _Days of Our Lives_," Reid replies, "He said he liked that there weren't any surprises. It was practically his whole DVD collection. That and _The Godfather_." These moments happen every so often and Elle is never sure what brings them on. When they were driving north from Utah into Idaho, Reid told her that Emily Prentiss was an ambassador's daughter who hated politics and once in a diner in Montana she learned that JJ was afraid of the woods. Elle's strategy is to wait it out and hope Reid changes the subject.

They sit a moment in silence, then Reid says, "The doctor and the grandmother."

"No way," Elle says, "It's the brother for sure."

* * *

They're in Tennessee and so is the FBI. It was bound to happen eventually.

They're running east after being ID'ed twice in California and once in Oregon. Elle's given up on the west coast entirely. She has vague ideas of heading to New York City, which she thinks is big enough to let them stay anonymous for a while.

Agent Jordon Todd is on their TV. The bottom of the screen informs them that she is the FBI liaison, but Elle knows that what she really is—to Reid at least, judging by the strangled, angry noises he makes—is JJ's replacement.

Agent Todd is holding up a picture of a paunchy, watery-eyed man. They aren't here for Elle and Reid, which is throwing Elle off balance. She's having a hard time reconciling the desire to run with the fact that they don't have to. Not yet, at least. Reid is sitting on the edge of the bed in front of the TV, hands fisted in the comforter on either side. He's sitting stiffly with his eyes glued to the screen. Whenever Todd is on, he glares.

Elle ruffles his hair, trying to lighten the mood.

"So, what are you thinking?" she asks. He ignores her, settling his hair again with a quick flick of his head.

"I'm thinking she can't do her job," he says. Elle examines the woman again. She looks fine to Elle. She's standing straight, looking at the camera and her voice is steady and urgent. When she starts to speak again, Elle catches Reid's hands tensing in the covers. The words she uses and the inflection sound familiar, too much like JJ.

"Seems fine to me," she says carefully, "But you're the genius, Genius."

"She's involved," he replies shortly.

Suddenly his eyes go wide and he slips off the bed. He kneels in front of the TV, his nose inches from the screen. Elle catches on a second later. There are a number of agents standing behind Todd and on the side of the screen, almost out of frame, is Garcia. She's watching Todd speak with a miserable frown and drumming her fingers against a laptop she has clutched to her chest.

Elle frowns. Garcia is pale, swathed in a brown wrap and looks like she's lost weight. It doesn't make her look good; it makes her look sick. In fact, Elle thinks that Garcia looks like she's been running as long as they have.

"I see," Reid says. He goes limp. All the tension from watching Todd drains away as he focuses completely on Garcia, drinking in the sight of his teammate for as long as he can.

When the story ends, Reid flicks to a different news channel. It's the biggest news in town and every station is running it. They can flick between channels for twenty minutes and chances are they land on the image of Agent Todd at the podium and Garcia behind her. When the six o'clock news ends, the seven o'clock news begins and they channel hop for another hour. Reid's eyes never leave the screen.

By the end of the night, Elle has the drum of Garcia's fingers against her laptop memorized. As she lies awake in the dark motel room, listening to Reid shift in the bed beside her, the drum changes in her mind, stretching here, contracting there until suddenly it is a crystal clear pattern. She realizes that Reid saw the pattern in seconds, before the first airing ended.

Elle doesn't know if Garcia is trying to open a line of communication or if her fingers are betraying her mind. Either way, Elle's heart lurches as she thinks about Garcia's fingers tapping out Morse code on the TV and how Reid spent hours watching.

_Reid, Reid, Reid_…

* * *

Elle can't bring herself to take them somewhere so close as home, so they end up going through Albany instead of New York City, cutting through upstate New York as they head for Maine. Elle likes driving through the east. She likes crossing state lines and when they're clustered together so that they can drive through a state in an hour, she feels safer. Fall arrived while they were in California and by the time they arrive in the northeast, it's in full swing and heading to winter. When she gets muggy from driving she can roll down the window and let the crisp, cold wind blow across her face. It reminds her of the first day of new snow, before it becomes slushy and brown from traffic.

At first Elle doesn't notice that Reid gets twitchy while they're in the east. He's twitchy enough on a normal day and the way his fingers flutter through the air has long since become a background detail that Elle filters out. The fact that he'll talk non-stop for an hour, followed by three hours of thin-lipped silence doesn't bother her either. She's glad to have some quiet.

She thinks he's daydreaming out the window until they're stopped on the highway, stuck in traffic funneling into a toll. Reid sits up straight and looks around him rapidly, trying to keep his eyes on all the cars around him. Elle realizes that he hasn't been daydreaming. He's been keeping track of the cars and noting down license plates.

"Reid?" she asks.

"I'm fine," he says. His voice is tense and he's snappy, so Elle doesn't ask again. One thing she learned from Hotch was how many ways a person could be fine.

* * *

The forecast on the radio calls for snow as they cross the border into Maine. The first flakes spiral down from the sky soon after. They're driving through a small town that is more like a village and Elle decides they need to stop for the night or end up stuck in the snow in the middle of nowhere.

They wind up in a church because Elle drives through the town twice without finding anything resembling a motel. A bent, withered old lady tells them they can sleep in one of the rooms downstairs, then shows them a room full of donated clothes and insists they take what they need.

Reid has nightmares every night while they wait for the snow to stop and the roads to clear. He wakes up screaming for the team. The names of Hotch and Morgan echo along the halls and Emily's name, more incoherent and frantic, slurs as it bounces against the walls. With each one, Elle is less and less able to calm him.

Elle has her own nightmares. In one, Hotch is standing outside a locked door with his gun pointed at the ground. He nods once to Morgan and sweeps his gaze to each member of the team in turn.

Then Morgan kicks down the door.

Then Reid starts screaming.

Then Elle wakes up. She presses one hand to Reid's chest and the other to his forehead until he turns out of her touch. When she drops back onto her own cot she dreams about Emily Prentiss lying in a heap in a snowdrift. Reid is kneeling at her side, pushing his hands into her stomach. In the dream, Emily's face is blurry and indistinct. Her blood stains the snow red.

Elle gives up on sleep entirely, choosing instead to sit outside in the hall with her back up against the wall, eyes on her watch as she counts the seconds of silence.

By the third day, Elle's joints feel like they're full of sand and she's so far past exhausted she actually feels awake again. Out the window, a plow is making its way slowly down the street. The snow on the street piles up along the sidewalks in huge drifts. Reid keeps wiping his hands on his pants and when he looks at the piles of snow looming in the windows, he freezes and his throat works like he's trying to swallow. Elle has to call him three times before he responds. Then he jumps and goes back to packing, avoiding her eyes.

They'll be able to leave soon, and the sooner the better. Elle wants to be as far away as possible by sundown. She thought they would stay awhile in Maine, but now she wants to run.

Elle doesn't see him come in. She's down the hall in the church's tiny kitchen, gathering the few canned goods they have left. When she hears footsteps, she thinks it's Reid, ready with their little bag full of clothes.

Elle doesn't have a chance to warn him.

"I've got you all dug out," a strange voice says in the hallway, "My grandmother insisted I—"

Elle pokes her head out of the kitchen in time to see Reid poke a tall, muscled young man in the eye with a finger and drive his knee into the boy's groin. For a moment, Elle is back in the gym in Quantico and she and Morgan are teaching Reid to fight dirty.

The dish in the boy's hand—it looks like shepherd's pie, from his grandmother, presumably—smashes to the ground, spilling food and glass everywhere. The boy goes down a second later, hunched over into the fetal position. Reid pauses with the kid at his feet. All Elle can think is that she doesn't want another dead body to account for, especially not one so young.

Elle runs down the hall and gets between Reid and the boy, slipping a little in the spilled food. She pushes Reid and he stumbles back, arms reaching for balance against the wall. Elle steps forward, keeping close. When she goes to push him again, he steps backwards on his own and makes no attempt to get past her.

"Okay," he snaps. He straightens his shirt with an angry jerk and runs one hand through his hair. "_Okay_." Reid turns on his heel and disappears upstairs. Elle grabs the food and bag of clothes. She stops a moment by the boy, still writhing on the ground. She wants to say something, maybe sorry. Instead she steps over him silently and runs after Reid.

The boy is true to his word; their car is clean of snow and he even convinced the plow to take a run through the parking lot so they can get out onto the main road.

"I'm sorry," Reid says as the town disappears behind them, "I wasn't going to kill him."

"It's fine," Elle says, "We're fine."

Reid nods, settling back into the seat. Snow is piled on all sides. The road looks slick and wet in the early morning light. Elle watches him sideways while she drives. He looks relaxed, but his eyes are on the road, counting cars again. _Yeah_, Elle thinks, _we're fine. Everything is just fine. _

* * *

Reid never does look guilty about killing the man in Missouri. He looks guilty about surviving, though. All the time.

* * *

Reid offers to drive them through Chicago. Elle gives up the driver's seat because she feels strung out and because refusing would bring a worried frown from Reid and an "Elle, it's okay." He's been watching her for days with a furrowed brow and reaching out for her shoulder, but stopping short of touching.

They hit Chicago in the evening. Reid sits forward in the driver's seat, hunching a little over the wheel to peer out into the evening gloom to read the street signs. Elle offers to read the map, but Reid shakes his head.

"We're already here," he says, pulling the car over to the side of the road. Elle gets out of the car slowly after Reid. When she closes her door, Reid gives her a look over the car like he's done something she won't like and knows it. She follows him up a flight of stairs to a door at the end of the hall. It opens as he raises his hand to knock, pulled open by an older woman.

"Oh my poor boy," she says and pulls Reid into a giant hug.

Elle reels back, adrenaline spiking through her limbs. Her heart hammers in her chest and she feels dizzy. You don't just touch Reid like that, especially not strangers. Elle sets her feet and balances her weight, ready to run or fight. Reid, on the other hand, slouches into this woman's embrace. She rubs a hand across his back in slow circles and his head drops towards her shoulder.

The woman watches Elle over Reid's shoulders with a look Elle recognizes as Morgan's. It's a combination of the smug look he got when he was right and knew it and the one he had for the cases that involved kids.

"It took you long enough," the woman says, "I've been expecting you."

* * *

Reid took them to Morgan's mother. It takes a while for Elle to get over the audacity of that move. Reid took them to _Morgan's mother_.

Fran doesn't seem to notice or care that she now has two fugitives from the law under her roof. Elle brings it up over breakfast the next morning and she shrugs it off with a flick of her fingers.

"The FBI already came by," she says as she cracks an egg into a skillet. Elle waits for more information, but none comes.

"And?" she asks. Fran shrugs again.

"And I told them to get the hell out."

Elle knows it isn't that easy. It _can't_ be that easy. The FBI doesn't give in and it certainly doesn't give up, especially when it's one of their own. Reid and Fran, though, seem to see this stop as a safe haven. Reid sleeps through every night, eats everything Fran sets in front of him and spends hours reading every book he can find. Fran clucks over their dismal collection of second hand clothes and strategically leaves cookies on the table at the exact moment Elle has a craving. It leaves Elle itchy and nervous. She's waiting for the knock on the door or the call in the middle of the night that will send them back on the road again. It'll come, Elle is sure. It's only a matter of when. In the meantime, Elle sleeps less and watches more. She doesn't believe in safe havens.

"They aren't coming for you," Fran says. It's evening and they've been in Chicago almost a week. Reid is slouched on the couch, reading one of Morgan's old law textbooks like he's reading fiction. Fran is in a chair with a heap of fabric on her lap and the TV on low, sewing patches into the least ragged of Elle's clothing. Elle can't stop pacing. She's slowly wearing a path into the carpet: behind the couch, into the kitchen and back.

"You don't know that," Elle says. Around the kitchen table, heading out to the living room.

"I know you don't believe it, but you can stay here. It's safe," Fran tells her. Elle shakes her head, heading behind the couch to peer out the window. Reid looks up as she passes behind him again on her way to the kitchen. He reaches up and catches her hand.

"Elle," he says softly, "It's okay. We can leave. If you want to." He looks alert and healthy and Elle can feel how relaxed his hand is in hers. Suddenly Elle wants to go back to the moment in Missouri when Reid calls out her name so that she can turn around and walk away.

She snatches her hand away from Reid and storms into the kitchen. They're leaving tomorrow, she decides, immediately after breakfast. One last good meal and they're gone.

* * *

Fran presses a gun into her hand before they go. It is a Glock 17 with a SureFire X400 attachment. She reaches up to touch Elle's face. The skin at her knuckles is soft and loose.

Elle thinks about growing old and how she'll probably die before she does.

* * *

Elle wears the gun in the waistband of her jeans, under her shirt and tucked tight into the small of her back. Reid takes over driving. Elle tries to get back behind the wheel, but Reid flips the keys into his palm and the next minute they've disappeared, so Elle gives in.

In Eastern Missouri, Reid makes them get out and walk around in the evening. Elle prefers the close quarters of the car to the open street where anything could happen, but she walks with him because he has a point. If they stop moving, eventually they'll forget how.

Reid grabs a newspaper from the trash, scanning the front page. After a minute he folds it in half, tucks it under his arm and starts talking. He wants to tell her about hummingbirds and how there are between 325 and 340 different species. Elle isn't really listening. The street is almost empty, but there's a man up ahead with his head down, reading.

At her side, Reid talks himself around from hummingbirds to chickens, and when he gets to the point that chickens are the modern day T-Rex, he turns himself to walk backwards so he can talk to her face to face. She turns her attention from the man ahead of them, trying to pull Reid around to face forward again.

"The embryonic chicken even has a tail that—" Reid says. There is a clatter and he cuts off abruptly. Suddenly he is no longer beside her. He's on the ground and the guy is standing up from a crouch, looking around in confusion and rubbing at his shoulder. When he sees Reid, he reaches out a hand.

Elle slaps the hand down and draws her gun. She risks a quick glance at the ground, enough to see that Reid is in a tangled heap with one hand over his face. Elle aims for the guy's head and puts her finger on the trigger. She's ready to fire and she doesn't think twice.

"It's okay," someone says, "It's my fault."

Elle feels a hand on her ankle. It's Reid. His fingers press against the skin above her sock, then he pulls himself upright. His palms are scraped from catching against the ground and he holds a hand to the side of his head, wincing slightly. Elle almost pulls the trigger there and then, but Reid grabs her arm, dragging her aim down and sideways.

"Elle," he says, "Don't kill him." She pulls against the weight of his hand, back to the man's head.

"Why not?" she asks. Reid tilts his head and gives her a look. It's one she recognizes. It says you're smarter than this and stronger and you won, once.

Elle lets the gun drop a fraction. Reid smiles at her and she lets him take it from her hand. The man lets out a quavering "thank god" then sprints down the block and around the corner. Reid turns Elle back towards the car and this time he gives her the keys and lets her take the front seat again.

They sit for a moment in silence, then Reid opens the newspaper in his lap.

"Looks like Fran was right," he says. In bold block letters the first headline reads _FBI calls off hunt for missing agent_. When Elle used to read the paper every morning, this was the sort of news she would look for.

"Do you believe it?" Elle asks. Reid shrugs.

"Maybe. We could try though. We could stop running." Elle wonders what it's like to stay in one place and feel safe. She turns the key in the ignition and the car hums into life. She doesn't know if she believes it either, but she can't deny that they stayed in Chicago and it felt like a trap that never closed.

"So are we going to Virginia?" she asks. Reid folds the newspaper under his seat and sticks the gun in the glove compartment before looking back at her with a hint of a smile on his face.

"No," he says, "Let's go west first."

* * *

Elle never asks about the man in Missouri because she doesn't have to. People who read the newspaper—civilians who wake up, push paper across a desk and only think about monsters when it's dark out—read about one survivor and build elaborate conspiracies. The only man left alive sounds mysterious if you don't know about the family you choose.

Elle always wanted Reid to go in last. So did Morgan. So did everyone.

As to the how, Elle doesn't really care because it doesn't really matter.


End file.
